The Shadows by Megan Chance Read Free Book Online Page B

don’t need the cards.” Cannel glanced back to Finn. “You’re Finn MacCool. Truly Finn MacCool.”
    “In the flesh. And I’ve made you a promise, Seer. I’ve never yet broken a vow. Help us find the
veleda
and our task, and we’ll release you.”
    Cannel nodded. Hero worship was in his eyes now, an expression Diarmid had known well once upon a time, and one that he was just beginning to see again since they’d defeated the Whyos and the Butcher Boys. When they passed, little boys turned to their friends and whispered, pallid-faced girls tendered hesitant smiles. Diarmid had to admit that he never grew tired of it—though he tried to remember that pride had been their undoing.
    Cannel fingered the cards. He turned over another. And then he noted, “It says here that we haven’t much time.”
    “What do you mean?” Finn demanded.
    “This card signifies the Otherworld. The door between worlds.”
    “This we know. The sacrifice must take place on Samhain, when the veil between worlds is thinnest,” Finn said. “We have until then to win the
veleda
’s choice.”
    Cannel nodded. “That’s October thirty-first. It’s already May. Only five months.”
    “And if we don’t find who called us?”
    Cannel looked back at the cards. “Death. Disaster. Chaos. I can’t see you past this. Any of you.”
    “You’re certain of it?”
    “I’m rarely wrong.”
    “That isn’t what you told us when you arrived,” Finn pointed out.
    Cannel flushed. Finn turned to the rest of them. “Well then, it’s quick work, but nothing we can’t handle.”
    “I’m betting a week or less before we find her,” Ossian boasted, tossing his white-blond head. “We’ll be in the hills of Ireland before we know it.”
    The others cheered.
    Only Diarmid was quiet.
    This was a place of marvels. Messages traveled through wire, paper so common—and printed, no less—that it fluttered from every post and wall. Ships ran on steam, and streetcars raced on rails. Houses were piped with light, and black stones burned for hours to heat even the largest rooms. Miracles.
    Though few of those miracles seemed to reach this part of the city. Even the streetlamps seemed dim here, as if the light were afraid to reach out into the darkness. Just now, themoon was full, and its brightness barely sneaked past the tall buildings leaning together to block the sky. Darkness was always the way of it here; the warrens of dead ends and alcoves were always shadowed, where men too drunk to walk—or dead—huddled. Dust rose in clouds and hazed both sun and moonlight. Narrow, unlit hallways and stairs so dark they were impenetrable even at noon, hazardous and slippery with wet and slime and sometimes other things. Piles of garbage in the streets that came to Diarmid’s knees, riddled with rats.
    He missed the green hills of home. More than that, he missed the peace of it. Here, even at night, the streets were full, people camping out on the flimsy landings of fire escapes, trying to flee the stink of the tenement flats and the heat—only late spring, and the rooms were already too hot and suffocating to bear. There were people on the rooftops too: women doing laundry in the cool of the night, children shouting and racing, couples courting, and men and women drinking and talking. From down the street came raucous yelling from some stale-beer dive or a two-cent lodging house.
    Diarmid sat on the stoop, leaning back against the wooden rail. He tilted his head, trying to see the sky, instead seeing people leaning out of their windows.
    “Going out tonight, Derry?”
    “I heard you boys was going after the Black Hands next. I got a wager on ya!”
    “You look lonely, lad. Want some company?”
    The last was from Mrs. Mahoney, who never failed to givehim a grin and a wink when he went by. Diarmid called up, “When I do, you’ll be the first to know.”
    She laughed, and he looked down at his legs, covered now with coarse trousers and his boots, which